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How to Respond to Every Social Media Inquiry in an Average of 19 Minutes

Special Guest: Dan Gingiss

Dan Gingiss, Director of Digital Customer Experience & Social Media at Discover, joins the Social Pros Podcast this week to discuss what it’s like to lead the way in social customer service, how his social team forms partnerships with other businesses, and how their content strategy has changed over the years.

Tweetable Moments

Taking Customer Service Online

Discover was the first credit card company to offer 24-hour phone support, and now they’re leading the way in social media customer support, as well. They answer questions on Twitter and Facebook from 9am to midnight EST every day.

Dan Gingiss has a team of about 15 customer service representatives in a call center in Utah. They were originally phone reps, but now they’re also cross-trained to use social media, email, and Click-to-Chat on the Discover website. “They will tell you 2 to 1 that they are very happy to not be on the phone anymore,” Dan says.

Dan’s team has set a goal to be the best in any industry. To do this, Discover had to stop looking at its direct competitors and looked instead at airlines, who by definition have to keep response times as low possible.

A few years ago, his team was proud that they would respond to social media questions within 3 hours. Now, they’ve gotten that time down to 19 minutes.

Perhaps most helpful in lowering response times was the fact that Discover already had a culture of great customer service. He then had to provide the right tools and training for his team. “They don’t have to think anymore about how to respond in 140 characters or less,” he says. “They have their shortcuts and their abbreviations that they already know.”

As they become more comfortable with their presence in the social sphere, Dan and his team have also adjusted their metrics for success in content creation. “We stopped counting our followers,” he reports.

Instead, they focus on delivering content that will provide value for their customers and ultimately encourage them to use their Discover card more. Keeping customers engaged and delighted drives their whole social media strategy.

“Analysts today spend 80% of their time gathering data,” Nick says, “and only 20% of the time actually analyzing it, and it really should be the other way around.”

As reporting metrics becomes a regular component of marketing jobs, the best practices are becoming increasingly codified, and tools are become more streamlined. Even more importantly, the tools we’re using are becoming more sophisticated; like Dan and his team, we’re moving away from counting followers toward collecting data on actual behavior.

The Big Two:

Dan Gingiss

What’s your one tip for becoming a social pro?

“My tip would be that social is not as different from other channels as you might think.” To do social customer service well, you first have to do customer service well. To do social marketing well, you first have to conquer the basics of marketing.